Clayton County voters will return to the voting booth Aug. 21 as last Tuesday’s election resulted in four runoffs.

Those races include that for senate district 44, sheriff, commission chairman and the Clayton County Commission District 3 seat.

According to officials with the Clayton County Elections and Registration Office, 25 percent of the Clayton’s 150,807 registered voters cast ballots on Tuesday.

Annie Bright, director of the Clayton County Elections and Registration office, said in an election, a candidate must take 50 percent of the total votes cast in that race plus one additional vote to be declared the winner without a runoff.

In the District 44 senate race, challenger Gail Buckner and incumbent Gail Davenport ran neck-and-neck throughout the evening. The results show Buckner finishing with 45.8 percent of the vote to Davenport’s 45.2.

In the race for sheriff of Clayton County, incumbent Kem Kimbrough led throughout the evening but challenger and former sheriff Victor Hill remained on his coattails. Kimbrough garnered 42.4 percent of the vote to Hill’s 37.5 percent.

The only remaining candidate in that race to finish with more than one percent of the vote was Clayton County Police Lt. Tina Daniel, who finished third with 12.9 percent.

The commission chairman’s race saw challenger Jeff Turner and incumbent Eldrin Bell neck-and-neck throughout the evening on Tuesday and, when the final votes were tallied, the two were separated by four tenths of a percentage point with Bell garnering 41.95 percent of the vote to Turner’s 41.91 percent.

The third candidate, Roberta Abdul-Salaam, finished with 16.1 percent.

In the Clayton County Commission District Three race, incumbent Wole Ralph and challenger Shana Rooks ran a close race throughout the evening with Ralph finishing on top with 44.07 percent of the vote to Rooks 42.7.

In another close race throughout the evening, that for District 78 seat in the House of Representatives saw the winner declared by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office late yesterday.

If this county elects Victor Hill again, after seeing the corruption he is being charged with, and jail time he has served, then this county is full of stupid people. But I guess we already knew that when the Board of Education was so full of stupid people that we lost our accreditation. Come on folks, where is your integrity???? Where is your intelligence????

I was told to "believe half of what you see and none of what you hear unless you heard it from the horses mouth". In America a man is innocent until proven guilty. In my opinion Victor Hill was a very strong fighter against crime in Clayton County. During the past four years under the direction of our current sheriff, our county has become a haven for criminals. It is so easy to cast judgement on someone base on hearsay, which may contain some elements of truth, but the best method for concern citizens in Clayton county is to look at the records of the two canidates and cast your votes accordingly. Stop talking and get out and vote!

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